Boys Don't Cry
by adharmic
Summary: Her junior year, Bella encounters the Cullen brothers. One of them captures her heart, while the other breaks the faith of those around him as he ambles down a well worn path to perdition. "Boys may not cry. But men certainly do." ExB, with J drama. AH-AU.
1. Chapter 1

_Boys Don't Cry_

Summ: Her junior year, Bella encounters the Cullen brothers. One of them captures her heart, while the other breaks the faith of those around him as he ambles down a well worn path to perdition.

_Jasper Cullen was a name that left the bitter residue of familiar despair on my tongue. But I could only remember the ferocity of Edward's conviction that Jasper was a redeemable man. He was deserving of the unconditional love he continually proved himself unworthy of, time and again. I didn't have the courage to tell him that Jasper was lost to the world, long before the day they became brothers._

_Boys may not cry. But men certainly do._

Disclaimer: I own nothing, not even the time I'm taking to type this.

* * *

"So, Bella's got your balls bluer than Papa Smurf…"

"Dude, shutup."

"Aww, Eddie don't be such a prude. See, even she's smiling." He smirked easily in my direction and I pretended not to notice, even as my lips slightly upturned. Edward blushed, thinking he could hide behind a diffident mask. He couldn't.

"I can't really concentrate with your tobacco tongue wagging in my face, jackass."

"You got something lodged nice and tight in your rear, or you finally PMS-ing?"

"Shut up, Jas."

His tongue caught between his nicotine stained teeth, and Jasper hissed a laugh as a balled fist met his knee. Empires rose and fell, the tides ebbed and flowed, and he laughed, not at, but _for_ a boy with bronze hair and taut, pale knuckles as I sat observing them both. Only a moderate hill of scrap metal separated me from them as I crouched slightly embarrassed on a grease-stained garage floor, but oceans parted my access to their easy companionship.

If I could recall even one moment, one frozen in a carelessly catalogued mental snapshot, in which Jasper Hale Cullen was at peace with himself, it was forever in the company of Edward. They didn't make sense. People very rarely ever do, but they harmonized their discordant pasts, each of them playing to the other's end. They sang brotherly tales and weaved fraternal bonds, swearing and spitting while one restrung his guitar and the other sucked the tar from the end of a lighted cigarette. Sharing newly discovered rites of passage and dirtied innocence, they became men together as only brothers could. Edward belonged. Jasper didn't. But the blood between them thickened, flowed and mixed to such an irrevocable point that the water of transient adolescence couldn't break through in thin, meandering streams. The love was there and it built a dam so resilient, one wouldn't think they tread their paths to adulthood miles apart. One of them eternally lagged behind, carrying the burden of an ache that only grew with time, age, and experience.

But even the lightest of loads burns a hole through the weary traveler. The day Jasper succumbed and the burden overcame his dwindling strength, the sharpened splinter of hearts breaking circled him, sounding over the dead noise of his final fall to the ground. Masking the thud as he bent upon himself from his knees, to his palms, to his forehead scraping against jagged stone.

And he bled for his sins as he should have. The earth sucked him dry; a greedy vampire that tunneled his life back into the void.

I pitied him.

Jasper was not for this world, and the day Edward understood this, in its truest essence, he buried a piece of himself alongside the interred body in the dark, damp soil. Alongside Jasper: the sinner, the man, the _brother_.

It was an irreplaceable shard of Edward, a broken pane of glass mirroring his soul that I could never regenerate through my endless devotion to him. Through my tireless quest to abound happiness in every corner of his shadowed mind. My jealousy of this adequacy that Jasper carried pitted itself in the darkest recess of my heart. I never felt for Jasper the way family should, the manner in which the Cullens _did_. I barely held my seething rage towards him behind a carefully composed mask of strained acceptance.

But I understood. I experienced Edward's defeat remotely through a rippled haze of diluted empathy, but I did understand.

Because I also buried a piece, one that was insubstantial and a weak echo of Edward's, but a vaguely remembered piece of me nonetheless. I buried the piece that held Jasper, my friend.

Our stories intermingled at separate parts, but remained whole in each other's presence. Now that Jasper was gone, his thread in my journey to Edward would begin to fray and unravel and we would be left with only fragments of the story. We would begin to the doubt the exact origins of the where's, and when's, and why's, but that was alright. It was something we could bear to live with.

With the passage of time, most anything could be endured by us, together. Even the pain of loss.

* * *

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	2. Paint It Black

Don't own. Please enjoy and review.

* * *

I was under the weather. No, literally, I was under the weather in the town of Forks, Washington. Rain patterned beads already marked the windows of the police cruiser and shuddered slowly with the onset of wind. It was a welcome I would not soon forget.

My feet welded themselves to the floor mat of passenger seat as I took in the house before me, Charlie behind me, and the scent of pine scented car freshener in between. My duffel and suitcase were already collecting puddles on their pliable, dented surfaces in the driveway and I couldn't bring myself to force the door open and salvage them from a drowned fate.

This was home. _This _was now home.

I could moan, complain, inwardly fume that a clapboard house in this desolate of a location couldn't possibly be an acceptable setting for the remainder of my high school years. That my abhorrence of all things wet and cold distinctly designated this place as one to avoid through all means possible. I could carry on in normal teenage fashion and consider myself marked for mediocrity and the mundane, in a town whose prized landmark was a diner that claimed to serve Washington's third largest cheeseburger.

But my roots were never ones that channeled themselves deeply into any soil, and I was not homegrown in the least. Be it Phoenix or Forks, I was never where I desired to be, and it was a truth that I learned to quickly resign myself to.

I had many things to be grateful for. I was loved by a mother who took too much stock in spontaneity to understand that routine was the recipe for stability, and by a father who had forced us into the position of virtual strangers in his reticence to impinge on Renee's authority.

That was her name. Renee. Like the thinker, Descartes.

I think therefore I am. I live therefore I breathe. I' m here therefore I take action to ensure I'm not here much longer.

On the cusp of seventeen, I had a plan that would ensure some partial success of fulfilling the view I had for my future. I wasn't under the delusion that college held any grand escape, but it would my choice, my decision as to where I went, how I lived, what I would grow into. And wasn't independence what any red-blooded American teenager strived towards? Education was my key, and high school would be a distant memory after three, not four, empty years. I would make sure of it.

In the late summer of 1998, home was an illusion that I convinced myself into following down a yellow brick path. When Charlie hesitantly extended an offer of a tour of the house, the place of my early formative years, I managed a sympathetic smile and genuine nod of the head in the general direction of the front door.

After all, this was probably much harder for him than it was for me. He had to have seen what kind of image I now subscribed to; had to have seen the piercing, the heavily lined ebony eyes, and the few errant sections of hair that had been fashioned into braids, towards the crown of my head. I had changed while Charlie, very much like the state of his house, had remained a static, Forksian fixture. Fortunately, my nose ring did little to faze him and the reunion commenced as I laid damp articles of clothing to dry near the upstairs window. Charlie held his arms crossed in the doorway before I once again reassured him of my familiarity with a rickety unfinished rocking chair and a mismatched quilt and sheet sets. Then he left to give the impression he wasn't hovering.

The rain didn't abate until early the next morning. I suffocated under the weight of its heavy patter on the roof.

* * *

High schools are exploited institutions, the regularly scheduled goings on within them generally exaggerated. Cliques and socially relevant hierarchies were mostly fabricated for the benefit of ensuring the students aspired to become something more than they were. From my vantage point, social mobility was a readily available mechanism to achieve whichever identity you secretly sought for yourself, and barriers were broken through on a timely basis.

You were never alone, unless you ensured that loneliness was a mold you crafted for yourself.

I knew I definitely didn't mind it.

I hadn't really expected the truck to be waiting as I haphazardly slung my black Jansport backpack across one shoulder, allowing the mass of it to slink heavily onto my right side. Black combat boots laced up with white bungee cord donned my feet, slapping noisily against the accursedly wet gravel. My pair of faded black boot-cut jeans was an inch too long and the white t-shirt under my over-sized black leather jacket displayed a hole under one arm. I fiddled with one of five zippers on my jacket, channeling some calm as I sized up the bulbous curves of the hunk of large red metal before me .

It was old. Very old. The paint was peeling and I pushed out any hope for an electronic hookup to the stereo for my Discman.

But the tires were new. And it was mine. Lay down your theories over the psychosis regarding possession and demarcating ownership, but I couldn't care if what I was feeling was the manifestation of some chemically processed delusion.

It was mine.

Charlie was much more accommodating than I had initially thought. I owed him more than apathy and a piss poor attitude, so I gave an authentic smile and awkwardly bumped my shoulder against his arm. As far as warm gestures went, that wasn't bad for me on a first day, in a new place.

He didn't have to supply me with an independent means of transportation, and yet here he was, _wanting_ to do it.

Even if his hands never left the pockets of his navy blue uniform and the Chief of Police stance never faltered, his overgrown mustache quivered with a conspiratorial laugh.

After the words "1957 Chevy pick-up", "replaced parts", and "drive safely" were exchanged, my bag made its way onto the aged leather of the bench seat and the engine turned with a giant roar.

Forks High was a fifteen minute drive, ten if you knew exactly where to find it off the thick green brush of the highway. If I never held the interest of anyone in the next year at Forks High, it would be safe to say that my truck would. It lumbered gloriously into the back row of parking spaces in the student lot, and the rumbling thunder of its effort caught the attention of smattering of students delaying an inevitable exodus into the main building. With an uncomfortable lurch I parked, tail end first, and a wave of dirty rainwater sloshed onto the back windshield.

I would have to remember to tarp over the bed of the truck the next time it rained, which could occur in any time period spanning from the next five minutes to forever.

Sighing that my hair now lay staggered and unkempt from the humidity of early September, I pulled it back with an elastic band, allowing it flow limply beyond the flat lines of my shoulders.

First impressions were never a problem. People discovered me and rapidly overhauled their assumptions. I knew what to expect and they would learn that titles were not something I operated under. Think of me, ignore me, love me, hate me, offer your praises, insults, and confusion, I couldn't sway the decisions of the student body. I wouldn't be here long enough for any of it to matter beyond a mildly curious look and slight shrug of the shoulders.

What I didn't expect was the solid slam of my door against adolescent skin and bone as I swung it open, knocking the wind out of some poor soul that made the foolish decision to insinuate himself between my tank and the next car over. His weak curses sounded themselves over light wheezing and I glimpsed a subtle flash of green and gold stitching in the corner of my eye.

I found myself caught between horror and amusement over my victim's clichéd choice of wardrobe. A varsity letterman jacket sighting, already. On my first day, no less.

I signaled him to back away from the narrow point of entry on the side of my door, and rapidly collected my things. By the time my booted feet met solid ground, his position had yielded from fully to half hunched over in pain.

"Jesus," I mumbled. Even with the length of his lanky torso and arms folded vertically, his height was substantial enough to notice and warrant some caution on my end. Enough to notice by anyone but me and my unobservant ass. I shifted uncomfortably before hefting my bag from the ground and reaching an unsteady hand out to graze his arm.

"Listen, I'm really sorry. I didn't see you there…" _No, I only happened to catch the logo on your obnoxiously conspicuous jacket. That thing could help land an airplane. _"I swear it was an accident."

The boy managed a pitiful 'yeah' before hocking a sizable loogie onto the pavement besides his surprisingly grubby, gray tinted Converses. With one last manly exhale, he stood at full mast, his bottom lip scrunching to one side and thinning in a sheepish grin. I sidled past him, my eyes fastened to the arch of his shoulder. His hair was a few shades lighter than mine and tinted with red, even when darkened with the mist that sprayed finely over us. It matted and flopped messily onto his forehead while giving me the impression of a wet sheep dog. His hands situated themselves at his middle, and I could only assume his stomach had received the brunt of my door.

"I..,"

"You really didn't see me?" He seemed just as perplexed as me by the phenomenon that his height was diminished by my action, and I gave an anxious throat chuckle in response. It cracked briefly in my discomfort over being interrogated by the freakishly long athlete in front of me.

"No. First day jitters and all that, I guess." I deadpanned. The parking lot was slowly emptying, a few stragglers hastily ripping papers from their bags as they ran up the ramps to their homerooms. I remembered that I had to detour to the main office to pick up a class schedule and make an appointment for later in the day to discuss the elaborate system of class credits I had concocted for myself this semester. But there we stood, quiet and still while searching for the perfect moment to disembark on our separate paths.

I was a little startled by my own reaction, plucking the knuckles on my fingers while deliberately shifting my eyes to anywhere but his. He was just very…tall, and the rain was beginning to pick up again. While I was convinced he was just going to let loose some conniving little shit remark, my tongue just stuck dryly to the roof of my mouth. I couldn't garner much more than awkward silence from either of us. His weight leveraged from one foot to the other and he shuffled backwards.

He made the decision for me.

"So that thing has a name, or what?" His hand scratched a shaggy lock of hair curtaining his eyes back off his face. While he was good looking, even handsome by standards inflicted by teenage peers, his expression gleamed blankly against the grayness of the morning.

I knew even the subtle emotions that clenched the space between my eyebrows, daily, held more depth than the look he ventured to give me.

_Too cool for school, eh? I've seen the likes of you before, douche bag. _

I slammed the door shut, and shoved the key into the rusted lock. It gave and twisted with a grainy, metallic click.

"What, the truck?" He nodded at my vehicle, coolly assessing me with his dangerously empty eyes. "No. Why would it need one?"

A crinkle of mirth appeared at the edge of his eye and the corner of my mouth lifted in small victory. I may have elicited something other than superficial interest and judgment.

_He is a real boy._

"It needs one because that would be the one benefit to owning it. Otherwise, you're stuck with a loud-ass piece of junk that's got serious rust issues."

_There it is. Conniving little shit. _

He lifted his eyebrows in sarcasm and halted his reverse movement. I stared with open surprise until the effect of his brief crack in humor subsided.

I could have reacted appropriately, inquired as to where his vehicle was parked…and keyed the hell out of the driver side doors. Or…

I rolled my eyes with his inane comment and moved past him.

"You got a name for that jock cape, then?" The words may have been nonchalantly tossed over my shoulder, but they effectively put an end to the little game. Yes, there was always a game, a puzzle to be analyzed and successfully completed in order to gain the respect of the inner occupants. Only suitable for ages 16 and up. Dangerous for those unaccustomed to the mind games of the opposite sex.

_Yes_, I thought as I hazarded glance back over my shoulder. I let out a soft snort as he ran a elongated, pale finger gingerly over the hood of my truck. I could see his shoulders twitching in what I construed to be amusement. _Very dangerous._

* * *

If walls could stretch endlessly, papered in half hearted attempts to provoke lukewarm excitement over group activities and communal rites of passage, they would have nothing on the registrar's office of the local high school. Page stapled upon page created miniature storybooks upon the plaster.

A garish pink leaflet advertising a bake sale hosted by the lacrosse team threatened to scorch my unmoving retinas and I quickly broke hold with the section of wall over Ms. Cope's shoulder.

After giving a disingenuous excuse regarding my lateness to my first period Calculus teacher, I managed to monitor the rest of my day. Many of my credits transferred from my high school in Pheonix, thankfully, rendering junior level courses almost moot in my case. Eschewing a few AP courses for the alternative college level courses in Biology, Spanish, and English, I maintained my steady pace on the fast track out of here. Now if only Ms. Cope could keep up.

"So, you've taken introductory Chemistry and Bio…"

_Oh, for God's sake woman_. "Yes, and Physics."

"And…oh, here we are…Physics."

Her glasses were forever sliding down the bridge of her noise as she softly ticked her blood red pen against the paper, marking off my conquests as I patiently awaited her dismissal. Apparently the computer age was undeniably remiss in impacting this region of the country.

"And you've tested into College –level Spanish, which means…oh my…" She glanced owlishly through her tinted lenses, clearly upset with the academic rigor that colored my current situation. "You will have to double up on English Literature for the entire year. You've taken American History over the summer…so that leaves AP World History." Her eyes roved from me, to the page, to my defiant smirk in alarm. "And there will be only one free period for you, on Fridays. The rest of your free block will be scheduled with mandatory senior electives, Participation in Government and Economics."

She leaned back in her seat, frustration over my overly ambitious course-load ironically taking a toll on _her_ mind.

My arms crossed defensively, of their own accord. I was tired of explaining myself, of explaining the necessity of my situation to authority figures who demanded conformity amongst the student ranks.

She dove in almost immediately, sensing my tension. Admonishing me. "Are you sure you want to be under the stress of a combined year? Why not spread the load over…"

"I'm sorry, but this has been my choice since before I came here. I'm not open to an alternative." My voice remained wooden. I remained wooden. She shrunk slightly under my uncompromising gaze.

On this first day, half the population chose to smoothly ignore me and my alleged 'vibe' while the rest eagerly mined me for information that could ready them for the stores of untapped potential I hid beneath my ample coat sleeves. The latter half thankfully admitted defeat in due time, after almost four periods of my clipped responses and non-existent efforts in adhering to social cues.

Meanwhile, under the suspicious and watchful eyes of the Forks students and faculty that comprised the former half, I was deemed many things: A goth, a goth-punk, a goth-punk who spent her nights trading secrets in the dark with the devil, a motor-head, a metal-head, a head-case who was most likely to be spotted chain-smoking outside the gym, an anarchist, a sado-masochist, an all around bad egg, and hater of all things associated with standard high school procedure. Rumors flew like an easy breeze through the school and I managed to come across more than one conversation that was striving to ascertain my 'deal.'

All before lunch.

And most of these things didn't even exist beyond the realm of some overactive imagination that referenced John Hughes movies as a suitable guide to categorizing peers.

And boy-who-had-yet-to-be-named from the parking lot was in four of my senior classes. He had not deigned to grace me with his conversation since our brief interaction that morning. Yeah, he had completely tuned in my interest by channeling the 'All American Jerk' after a mere nanosecond of acknowledging my existence.

He was cute. And I may have made him laugh. So sue me.

The after-taste of that non-verbal rejection left me slightly hollow and on edge.

Disappointment was a vindictive bitch.

So when Ms. Cope insisted on one more technicality that would widen the flaw in my carefully executed plans, the hinges almost flew off the door to my sanity.

_What? Motherfucking what? Do I have to play out some archetypal high school crisis which involves me humiliating myself in front of the cheer squad? I swear to God, I'll do it! _

Instead, I fixed her with a roiling stare, one that was bound to convey my absolute distaste. I flexed my fingers.

"We-ell," she was undeterred by the mercurial teenager that had dislodged any sign of the mature, faultlessly polite new addition to the school. To her, my behavior finally matched my clothes. "There's also a question of PE requirements. I see from your previous transcripts that you opted out of general phys. ed by participating in a varsity sport. You run…track!" With a hopeful tint shading her voice at this revelation, I cringed further into my unresponsive self.

"Ran…track."

"Well, you could -."

"No, I…I sustained an injury." The lie fell from my lips automatically. Team sports were a vacant thing of my past. I drew no pride or passion from them and they were simply a means to an end, no more, no less.

Ms. Cope shook her head minutely, still transfixed on my doggedness to pursue the high school schedule from hell. "I guess if you want a special exception, you'll need to take it up with the principal."

_Hallelujah._ Relieved, and not just a little smug in securing my hold over the remainder of my high school career, I turned to leave as she tried once more to assimilate me in to the folds of the lauded pastime of team sports.

"Our track team is very good, placed second at regionals…"

_Ms. Cope, I have less than 10 months until the Welcome to Forks sign is a blur in my rearview mirror. I don't want to run track, I don't want to buy a dress for prom, and I have no interest in convincing anyone otherwise. I'm sorry, but there is a reason I'm compressing fours years into three…_is what I would have said if I knew it would make any difference. But I wasn't going to fulfill some stereotype of the angst-ridden misfit any further, and Ms. Cope seemed like the type of woman who favored sensitivity over sarcasm.

A deep exhale and quiet 'no, thank you' sufficed on my end, as she took in my refusal with a pinched sigh.

She slapped the manila file over my crimson riddled records. "It's your choice."

As I walked out the door and once more into the perpetual drizzle, I confirmed that it was indeed my choice.


End file.
